Great post. If you don't mind me asking what do you store on your phone that takes up 512GB? I've always wondered what people store on their phones that takes up the room.
I know I am definitely in the minority, but my iPhone SE with 32 GB never gets full now that I use Google Photos to backup the images and delete them from the phone whenever it gets full.
I store all my videos of my children on my phone. I have backups on iCloud and Google Photos, but I prefer to have them on my phone. It's personal preference, and I know others do it differently, but I don't want to waste time looking at a spinning wheel waiting for the video to download if I'm looking at old videos. I'm lucky in that I can afford the extra storage.
I have tons of podcasts set to auto-download new episodes, and the file sizes on episodes can get pretty big. On my old 32gb phone I was constantly having to go through and prune podcasts as I don't auto-delete them since I'll often re-listen.
I know I am definitely in the minority, but my iPhone SE with 32 GB never gets full now that I use Google Photos to backup the images and delete them from the phone whenever it gets full.